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157 First Name: Amos Also Known As: Mieczyslav (Mietek) Lemanski Last Name: Turner Date of Birth: February 18, 1926 City of Birth: Tel Aviv Country of Birth: British Mandate for Palestine Pretending to Be a Pole Amos Turner I survived the Holocaust pretending to be a Pole. Before World War II, five thousand Jews and thirty thousand Poles lived in my hometown, Zawiercie, an industrial city in southwestern Poland. Jewish life centered on the synagogue; life cycle events; Hebrew, Yiddish, and Orthodox schools; and Zionist organizations. Most Jews lived in the Jewish section of Zawiercie that contained clothing and shoe stores, bakeries, groceries, and meat markets. Once a week, Polish farmers came to Zawiercie to sell eggs, milk, cheese, vegetables, fresh fish, and poultry. I attended the secular Tarbut School, where we spoke and learned in the Hebrew language. I celebrated my thirteenth birthday and my bar mitzvah in February 1939. The German Army, which included Austrians, marched into Poland on Friday, September 1, 1939, and three days later they entered Zawiercie. The German Army overtook the people who tried to escape the night before and forced them to return to Zawiercie. Britain and France, honoring their commitment to Poland, entered the war on September 3, 1939. Germany decided to annex southwestern Poland, including Zawiercie (Warthenau in German), and sent the Gestapo, police, and border guards to control the civilianpopulations.TheGestapoforcedtheJewishcommunitytoformtheJudenrat (Jewish Council), which consisted of leaders of the prewar Jewish community. The Gestapo informed the Jewish Council that they would have full jurisdiction over 158 Out of Chaos Jews. This was a shocking development as we realized that practically overnight we had lost all our rights. The Jewish Council tried to establish contacts with the Gestapo and police with bribes. In December 1939, the SS deported Jews from Bohemia to Poland. We gave up one room of our three-room apartment to an elderly couple from Bohemia. This room contained our kitchen, which my mother shared with them. Because we had to pass through their room every time we entered or left our apartment, they didn’t have much privacy. In later years, when the Germans deported Jews to death camps, the Germans pretended that they were deporting Jews to the east to work. The Gestapo ordered Jews to turn over radios, money, diamonds, gold, silver, and furs. We gave the Gestapo a radio, silver objects, and my mother’s fur coat. We hid money, gold, and my mother’s diamond ring. Jews complied with the order partially and hid what they could. The Gestapo confiscated Jewish homes and forced Jews to move to smaller and more congested quarters. We were also forced to wear the Jewish star and to perform forced labor. My four uncles and I had to show up every morning, and the Germans assigned us jobs moving furniture, doing repairs, and cleaning German offices and homes. I worked as an electrician, a trade I had learned in the Zawiercie Ghetto. In January 1940, we became aware of an atrocity committed by the SS. My Uncle Max, who fought in the Polish Army, was taken prisoner and kept in a stalag in Germany. After a few months the German Army transported the POWs to Biała Podłaska in eastern Poland. They separated the Jewish prisoners and turned them over to the SS. The SS marched them toward Lublin and on the way started to shoot the men who walked slowly. One-third of the marchers were killed before the Jewish Council of Lublin bribed the SS leaders. Uncle Max was released and returned to Zawiercie. We assumed at the time that the SS action was an aberration and that bribes could alleviate their abhorrent behavior. As late as 1941, almost two years into the German occupation, we were still able to walk to a nearby village to attend a Jewish wedding. I was also able to mail food packages to my mother’s oldest sister, Esther Goldsobel, and her family who lived in Warsaw and who suffered from hunger. All that stopped when the Germans formed the ghetto in Zawiercie, which happened at the end of 1941. Our apartment was in the Zawiercie Ghetto so we didn’t have to move. Although the Gestapo strictly prohibited it, I studied with a tutor, and we prayed on Rosh Hashanah and other holidays. We even had a sukkah in the ghetto. Having no other choice, we learned somehow how to adjust to the horrible conditions imposed by...

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